There are some really important changes going on that will shape the process of designing cities, and how we move and interact in them, over the next decade. Here's Mark's shortlist:

1. Huge cuts and a focus on the essential

Everyone - from entrepreneurs to public administrators, needs to adapt to a world where innovation "culture" is no longer focused around the bleeding edge, the piece of the economy that is the "growth" market. Instead, the most important innovation will focus on achieving dramatic cost savings or improvements in the usefulness of essential services - stuff that absolutely has to happen, rather than 'nice to haves'. In other words, the target market will be the "decline" market. Don't be scared. This is surprisingly good news, because we'll focus on solving big problems, instead of peripheral ones.

2. The gulf between skills and jobs

While today's corporates and governments meet at "Cloud Computing" conferences to debate how to put their boring, dated processes online in new ways, a new generation of digitally-empowered workers is approaching over the hill. These people need jobs, and already have, on their own laptops, far more flexible, powerful, communicative tools than almost anything that exists in the firms they're applying to work for. The result is going to be a crisis - new skills and new tools that many firms will resist adopting until it's too late. Young people will be hired into environments, start using 'enterprise' systems, and conclude that everything is lame. Successful firms (and governments) will attract the talent, harness these people and embrace the constantly evolving set of tools these people bring for themselves.

3. Big office space becomes obsolete

We all need somewhere to work - but what most organisations don't need is large buildings with big reception areas and "working" floors packed with desks and computer workstations. Yet today, the office is the definition of modern business and modern cities. This is about to change. Expect great confusion as developers and property owners resist the change (and the resulting fall in building values), while others see the opportunity to create larger, more flexible living and working spaces, possibly made available in completely new ways. You'll also see networks of people who came together digitally move into physical environments for the first time, in a big way. This will be exciting. Remember, New York lofts used to be warehouses and factories. Throughout history, new communication networks, from ships to railways to cars, have always led to the creation of new physical communities built because of them.

4. Consumerism in crisis

This one deserves two paragraphs. A couple of questions will dominate debate over the next few years. Will we expand or reduce the gap between rich and poor? Is a society whose wealth is measured based on the production and consumption of things, or the manipulation of their on-paper value, actually sustainable (economically, not just in terms of resources).

The dramatically changing ability of people to share what they do and think has the potential to reshape the way we decide what to buy, and how we articulate the experience of using those things. We're not saying you won't buy stuff - it just won't be the same hierarchy as it's been for decades. As the ripples from the financial crisis continue, fundamental questions about what wealth is, what it means, and how it should be demonstrated, will make for an interesting era. Notions of ownership have been in flux ever since most people stopped buying music, as an object to own. In an era when an iPhone is now a more useful, cheaper, social vehicle than a Ford Fiesta for many (especially young) people, an "Apps" culture means we are likely to buy lots more virtual stuff, rooted in software, where the emphasis is on doing rather than just having. The authenticity of objects, and the connections and associations they imply, is also likely to become ever more important.

5. Open versus closed

London's teenagers are likely all by themselves to generate and organise far more data than London's public authorities will over the next ten years. As the power of open source collaboration stretches beyond software, as the masses rush to share updates, pictures, and video of what they're doing and what they think, we're going to hit some nasty issues. These might be about security, privacy, lifestyle, even thought. But a lot of them will be about people defending existing approaches, who seek to undermine and discredit those who believe that by sharing ideas, knowledge and resources, we can create more wealth and better cities. Watch this space.

Joe and I would love to talk to people who have views on any of this. Bounce us a note, leave a comment, or please share this with others who may be interested. If you're in London, drop by and we'll film your comments. Or if you want to write a nice guest blog, we'll post it.

It’s been a long time coming, but be in no doubt that the electric vehicle (EV) revolution is finally upon us. What makes us so sure? We’ve seen Ford’s first EV coming down a production line, and actually driven it on public roads.

While
GM has long stolen headlines in the US with its Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid,
cross-town rival Ford now looks set to beat it to market with a humble Transit van.
It might not be Aptera-sexy, but its impact on the environment – especially in
cities – could be in a different league to the trailblazers currently in the market, like Tesla.

Whereas
most car drivers still worry about the range limitations inherent to electric vehicles,
with a van or small truck – where daily routes tend to be predictable, and well
under 100 miles a day in urban settings, ‘range anxiety’ for the driver
practically disappears. Ford’s move to make its first mass-market electric
vehicle a van, therefore seems smart – especially as many will go into big
fleets, where operators can closely monitor vehicles and provide detailed feedback
on the performance of what is still quite new technology.

First Ford Transit Connect BEV (here as Tourneo - a crew version) for the US, on the ramps in Smith factory

The
Transit Connect BEV as Ford calls it, goes on sale in North America in 2010, but the first vehicles to hit American shores are rolling down a production line right now
- in a factory in North-East England, where they’re built by Smith Electric
Vehicles. Earlier this week, Smith’s Dan Jenkins showed us the first Ford
Transit Tourneo Connect BEV on the production line floor, which you can see in this video below:

Smith
has a long history of building electric vehicles, with a number of big-brand
customers in Europe such as Sainsbury’s (supermarket), TNT (deliveries), and TK
Maxx (retail) already using its vehicles in their fleets. They’ve been converting Ford
vans for some years, so the official partnership between Smith and Ford that
was announced last year – which will ultimately see electric Transits being
built in a factory in Kansas City, seems logical.

The
real proof of the pudding is in the eating though, and having seen the first production vehicle on the factory floor (see video above), we then got to drive Smith’s demonstrator
prototype, fresh from a tour where it was shown to
people like Californian Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. As you’ll see in our
video (below), from the back seat, the feeling of traveling at 50 miles per hour in a
vehicle with no engine noise, feels more than “a little star trek”. But the
real story is that, from behind the wheel, the Transit Connect BEV drives just
like a regular car or van, only one that’s much simpler to operate, and much quieter on the move. We've driven the future, and it's electric:

Check out more videos from the day we spent with Smith on our Blip TV channel - and watch this space for more blogs and videos on this subject, which we're following very closely. All Movement Design Bureau material is available for republication under a Sharealike Creative Commons 3.0 license.

Disclosure - Ford is sponsoring The Movement Design Bureau's design and research work in 2009 - however we have an independent brief and say what we think. If you disagree, we want to hear from you. Thanks to all at Smith - and especially Dan Jenkins - for giving up their time to show us round the factory.

Right now there's a lot of confusion about the kinds of activities that various future grid-powered vehicles will support. Today, everybody is used to the idea that you can drive as far as there are gas stations, and that there are gas stations all the way to the ends of the earth. Which isn't quite true, but close enough!

Electric vehicle manufacturers argue that the vast majority of travel isn't multi-day drives through the tundra, but within twenty or thirty miles of home. So plug-in-hybrid manufacturers hope you will make most of those trips mainly running off stored grid power. The fully electric vehicle manufacturers hope that by extending range further, to one or two hundred miles, you can make all your trips fully electric. It’s worth looking at this landscape in more detail.Shopping trips are short, local round trips of less than about 20 miles. Both plug in hybrids and full EVs have no problem with battery capacity for these short hops. Even unconventional options like compressed air cars can also handle these frequent, short trips with no problems.Commuting trips are longer, regular trips. A typical round trip is 40 to 60 miles, but could be up to 100 to 120 miles per day. A plug-in hybrid would probably switch to gasoline power for a part of many of these trips. A full EV might have enough battery capacity for the regular commute, depending on its length, but perhaps not enough for a side trip on top of a long commute. This is the territory where another thirty miles on the round trip can make a substantial difference. Buyers of first generation EVs, in a time when charging infrastructure away from home may be spotty, will have to count their miles carefully.

Traveling trips are weekend journeys, road trips, and the three-hour drive to your aunt. Right now, hybrids will make these trips on gasoline to all intents and purposes. A plug-in hybrid battery will help for the first fifty miles, but after that it will be operating primarily on gasoline. Electric vehicles have real problems at this distance, and there are several opinions about what to do at this range. For the moment it may be as simple as "rent a gas car for the weekend."

On Thursday we interviewed Ford's Sue Cischke about the company's sustainability strategy and put the interview online. Now we're gathering comment from key thinkers we know. First up was Dan Sturges, next comes Drew Smith, currently based in Germany working as a freelance design strategist for an automotive design strategy consultancy. He also runs the downsideupdesign blog. Over to Drew...

By way of introduction, during a live interview last night at the Fortune Brainstorm: GREEN conference, Bill Ford went on record saying “One thing I’ll tell you for sure: our ability to forecast has been just horrible.” He added that despite bringing in external advisors to help forecast three-to-five year market developments, the company “might as well have just tossed darts” given their lack of success in defining the future of the Ford. Apart from demonstrating a, frankly, shockingly short term view on Ford’s future, one other thing occurred to me: Ford is talking to the wrong people.

Comfort zone

Against this background, I was, in some measure, pleasantly surprised by what Sue presented in the interview. It showed that the company is at least cognisant of some of the longer-term (i.e more than five year) mobility issues that the company will increasingly be party to.

Sadly, however, there was little to quell my fear that there’s not much in the way of a strategic approach to defining a sustainable role for Ford as part of an sustainable mobility future.

Furthermore, evidence abounded that old-school business thinking continues to reign supreme in Dearborn. From choosing to partner with an oil company, BP, in devising future vehicle strategy because “...they know... the fuel side of the business, we know... the vehicle side of the business” to continuing to interface with the old guard of the business development networks, there’s a sense that Ford is sticking, largely, to it’s comfort zone.

Yet Sue goes on to say that it’s going to “...take a different mindset” for America to make the transition to smaller, more efficient cars and, in the longer term, to alternative modes of mobility. She never communicated, however, how a change in mindset, either Ford’s or America’s, might come about.

Sowing the seeds of change

The cultural climate, to my mind, has never been better for sowing the seeds of substantial change in the way societies relate to mobility. It’s clear, based on Bill’s comments and this interview, that if Ford wants to participate in, and profit from this moment, they need to start talking to a different group of advisors. Now.

From an American perspective, issues surrounding energy independence, environmental degradation and the collapse of the credit markets (with the resultant modification of consumer values), provide the right environment for a visionary car company to take the lead in presenting an alternative, more sustainable transport future. Importantly, the American political leadership is in a responsive, supportive frame of mind too.

"I can’t help thinking that Ford would do well to stop seeing themselves simply as a
producer of cars and more as an active component in a sustainable
mobility future."

Creating a vision, taking it public

Imagine the possibilities if Ford sat down with the real thought leaders in sustainability (I include in this group anthropologists, designers, design strategists and urban planners among others) and developed a wide-ranging, flexible series of options for sustainable mobility in urban and suburban areas. Then, through a document/movie/multimedia extravaganza (Scott Monty could define the form), picture Ford taking this vision to the public.

On the one hand, the event would act as the touch point for opening up grass-roots community discussion about how we would like our lives to be lived in relation to cars and the urban environment.

More importantly the discussions would provide feedback and an opportunity for in-depth study of how the culture surrounding mobility is changing at the end-user level on a local scale.

It’s not as if the idea of going public with a broad vision of the future is unprecedented in the car industry. The GM Motoramas that ran from ’49 to ’61 sold an entire nation of eager consumers the idea of expressing themselves through how they moved from place to place. Ford could do the same to usher in a new age of sustainable mobility and, as a bonus, get themselves truly back in touch with the consumer, a vital relationship that the Big Three have squandered over the last 30 years.

For Ford to attain global relevance as a mobility provider, and for their products to dovetail elegantly with local transport infrastructures, the company needs to provide solutions that are at least regionally and, ideally, locally appropriate, assembled close to their final destination. This is a concept that Gordon Murray is already working towards with his T25 small car.

Ford: Think beyond the product, think entire ecosystem

Needless to say, this shift towards system thinking is risky for Ford because, as Sue said “..systems aren’t our core business, cars are”. But systems, beyond computer and OS, weren’t Apple’s core business either. Yet from the introduction of the iPod in 2001, via the opening of the iTunes Music Store in 2003 to becoming the world’s most popular online music and movie store, Apple transitioned from simply selling a product to providing the entire, highly profitable ecosystem.

At one point during the interview, Sue talks about the shift in environmental discourse from a binary, “black and white” approach to a more nuanced, “middle ground” view. I can’t help thinking that Ford would do well to undergo a similar shift in their thinking so that they stop seeing themselves simply as a producer of cars and more as an active component in a sustainable mobility future.

Drew lives in Frankfurt, Germany but originally hails from Australia. He holds a degree in Industrial Design from The University of Technology in Sydney, and a Masters Degree in Automotive Design from Coventry University - one of the world's premier automotive design colleges. He was recently named as one of Design Droplets top 10 industrial designers to follow on twitter. You can check out his profile here.

The UK Government’s decision to provide £250M ($360M) of funding, in the form of £5000 grants for customers to buy electric cars looks like big news at first glance. So, is it a really smart move from the UK Government, committed to incentivising change and driving consumer behaviour?

On the face of it, yes, but scratch below the surface and the scheme has more holes in it than a piece of Swiss cheese. First up, there are currently around 33 Million vehicles on the UK’s roads. If you do the maths, then at £5000 per car, £250M of grants gives you 50,000 cars. To me, that looks like a bit of a drop in the ocean. Hardly world-changing is it?

From a wider transportation futures perspective, what’s more worrying is that the Government has decided to delay the introduction of this scheme until 2011. It’s not clear why, but we aren’t the only ones wondering if it’s got something to do with the fact that none of the mainstream manufacturers will sell you an EV now, but by 2011 many of them will.

The problem with this approach is that it could crush a fledgling market, which in the UK has grown slowly but surely with a mix of small city EVs and some clever, quick marketing thinking from the likes of GoinGreen who import the Reva from India and rebadge it Gwiz. Worse than that, these vehicles – which are classed as quadricycles – won’t be eligible for the £5000 incentives. That’s some way to go about building and opening up new markets, Mr Mandelson.

Equally frustrating is that commercial vehicles – like the Smith Edison and Modec trucks, aren’t included. ‘So what?’ you might argue; they’ll be bought by fleets who can afford the extra cost of EVs, or incorporate the savings into a longer-term business plan. But what about the thousands of sole traders and companies with just a couple of vans who make up the lionshare of the delivery vehicles running around cities? They are one of the critical, potentially most beneficial vehicle groups and users to be moving towards EV platforms.

Even the existing vehicle guys are asking questions. We’re currently in Dearborn, Michigan, looking at Ford’s design and sustainability work. Yesterday I asked the company’s director of Hybrid Platforms and Sustainable Mobility Technologies, Nancy Gioia, about the scheme and the affordability of EVs. You can see what she said in the video below, but let’s just say that she didn’t seem to think the £5000 incentive was a particularly sensible long term measure. She’s arguing for upfront investment in R&D. EVs are expensive to develop and build, and car companies are short of cash. There is another angle, of course – vast sums have been poured into car companies for advanced research, especially in hydrogen fuel cells. And we're still talking about that technology being 10, 20, 30 years away from primetime.

Governments have a key role to play in driving mass market adoption of EVs. Incentivising purchase is one thing, but that’s a fairly blunt, token-like stick in helping to cultivate a new market. The big auto guys have never run fast on this stuff, and they don’t really see a world beyond the car as we recognise it today. Getting electrified versions of the types of vehicles we know and drive now is going to be expensive in the foreseeable future years. The first EVs from recognised manufacturers will be expensive enough to make many still think twice about them, even if there’s a £5000 sweetener on the table.

So if it wants to encourage a sustainable system of mobility, the best role the Government could play is in opening up the data it has on how people move around to allow the innovators to really use it, and by smoothing a path for start-ups, councils, designers and blue-chips to work together, and actually co-create something new. Dare we mention it – providing greater tax breaks and grants for those who are really pushing the boundaries of advanced mobility research and development might be one of the best ways to do this.

The pioneers deserve a break. They were right to invest what they could in EVs and they should not be hung out to dry while the big automakers get breathing space to catch up. The government should be rewarding risk takers who, when others sat on their hands, helped shape a fledgling market. Let the mainstream car companies catch up, but help the small guys find a role in this exciting future.

Posted by Joseph Simpson on 21st April 2009.

Disclosure: Ford Motor Company is sponsoring The Movement Design Bureau's Research work in 2009. We have an independent brief, looking at sustainability and design activities in the company. Ford has no control over what we publish - let us know if you don't see it that way.

Yesterday saw an American president take the unprecedented action of (essentially) firing the CEO of one of the country's largest corporations (GM) and giving another (Chrysler) just 30 days to live. He also mooted a ‘scrappage’-type scheme where drivers will trade in decade old (dirty) cars, to receive money off a shiny, (clean) new one. A similar programme has worked wonders for new car sales in Germany. We’re sceptical this is a good idea from an environmental point of view, but no one seems to want to talk about that right now – driving new car sales is paramount.

Today both Ford and GM launched a scheme, similar to Hyundai’s, to cover finance payments on new car purchases should the owner lose their job. Will all of this be enough to kick start car sales? Possibly. Certainly it may just be enough to help those in better shape to ride out the current crisis.

The problem is that few people connected to the industry seem to want to look much further than the end of their own noses, even in these unprecedented times. All of the above news is intended to help the auto industry in the short term. It doesn’t solve some key long-term problems.

There is oversupply in the industry, on a systemic, worldwide level. Even with fewer factories and laid off workers, healthcare and pensions burdens will remain vast for the auto industry for years to come. The rate of change of digital technology is still progressing at a rate fundamentally out of step with the auto industry’s development processes, which in turn have difficulty mapping and staying congruent with consumer demand. A piece in today’s Guardian aimed at GM and Chrysler is entitled “Create the market you idiots” and doubtless consumers will echo that sentiment. For years the industry has conducted clinics and market research essentially asking consumers ‘what sort of vehicle do you want’. Predictably enough, cars designed by clinics and market research tend not to be winners, because consumers don’t usually know what they want until they’re shown it. The problem for the industry is that right now, nobody in control knows what consumers want, and what they do want changes with the prevailing wind.

Even if everything being done now results in the industry getting back on track, just what constitutes back on track? Is $250 profit from each car, and every consumer tied to a $250-per-month, three-year car loan, back on track? That’s how it’s been for the past five years, so one might speculate that if this qualifies as back on track, then the automotive train will be falling off the rails again within a couple of years.

The industry needs to respond to bigger, critical issues – like that brought up by The Mechanic’s blog on Edmunds today. Young people aren’t interested in cars anymore. That simplifies the situation too far, but it’s a problem that the likes of Nissan have identified, yet done little about. At 27, I see the issue first hand. I can count on one hand the number of my friends who own a car at all, and the only person I know who’s bought a brand new car in the last two years, I’m engaged to. Beyond that, what’s the industry’s answer to the fact that in big cities like Tokyo, Paris and New York – the wealth generating capitals – between 30 and 50 percent of citizens don’t own cars? Don't think this is important? Last year for the first time, more than 50 percent of the world's populations lived in cities. Think about the logic of this - the majority of people who could afford a car, are now city dwellers.

Time was when Honda were promoting themselves as more than just a car company, and as a mobility provider. Likewise, when Jac Nasser embarked on his CEO mission at Ford, he not only bought Land Rover, Volvo and co – but took Kwik Fit (auto spares and repairs) and Hertz (car rental) under Ford’s wing. Car companies were doing more than ‘just’ making cars.

Now, in the desperate rush for survival, cost cutting has come to the fore. All this nice, cuddly, big thinking and advanced stuff is heading for the bin. Car companies – we are told – must focus solely on building the cars that people want. Apparently they’re going to be powered by electric batteries, and look pretty much like the cars we have today. But that many of the car companies already build great vehicles, and that those that don’t probably soon will (or die), seems beyond doubt. The question is whether in focusing solely on making and selling cars, the car companies will fail to provide the real answers to the future of how people need and want to move around.

Switzerland isn't a great place to feel poor so it seems unfortunate that the world's car bosses find themselves meeting in Geneva this week, at probably the auto industry's lowest point since the 1970s.

The mid seventies was a terrible time for the car industry, as the makers of our machines of movement walked dazed from the reverberations of the oil crisis of 1973 and the fuel prices and recession that changed both the type and quantities of vehicles buyers wanted.

Even by 1976 things were still hard - perhaps the only great machine of that year was the Porsche 928, from West Germany where car production in general was soaring on the back of a combination of product, quality, investment and general industriousness. In contrast the British industry was a mess. Austin Princess sales were peaking (if such a word is appropriate) and the manufacturing case study that is the Rover SD1 was being launched. Ford was slightly sharper - launching the Fiesta.

Design priorities change in times of big change. Currencies swing and oil prices bounce up and down. Financial services deals dry up through unstable valuations and poor access to capital, so established sales mechanisms fail.

New technologies change how and why we move, too. Perhaps not by coincidence the first personal computer (yes by that lot) was launched in 1976. Today, our lives are often half physical, half virtual. The Facebook generation has new ways to demonstrate its individuality without buying a Clio or a Focus or an MX-5. We interact differently and spend differently - and this is going to change more in future than it has already.

And then there's eco-awareness.

Porsche 928. Camberwell, London, October 2008. Note the surrounding leaves aren't so much green as golden.

Living the good life

Through both that era and this there was a swelling of sustainability awareness. From 1975 to '78 Britain, for example, was riveted to The Good Life, a TV sitcom describing a suburban husband and wife going sustainable in the heart of commuter-belt outer London. They had no car and grew their own food. Of course, in the end they relied on the neighbour's Volvo estate at various points. And oh how we all laughed.

Back to 2009 and no-one could have predicted quite how deep and how quickly the economy would fall and the world's vehicle (and city) designers have been caught short too. Because mobilising resources to design, engineer and market products takes time and today's organisations can't do it as fast as the economy can now change.

For the car industry the big challenge is that it's structured as a car-sales industry. I joked a few months ago to Bob Casey at the Henry Ford Museum that if only man had started discovering other habitable planets, then Detroit would still be expanding. Otherwise the basic numbers don't stack up, 100-odd years on.

Right now, there are moves on several continents to introduce huge incentives to scrap current vehicles, so people have the need for a new one. This is a rotten tactic - I simply don't believe that for a modest motorist who is happy with their existing 8-year-old car, scrapping it to buy a new one is more environmentally sustainable than keeping it.

The reality is, large scale scrapping is the only economically sustainable strategy for the auto industry right now.

But is there an alternative? There is an opportunity - right now - for the industry's design talent, and indeed the vast amount of design talent beyond that is currently locked out of making a difference, to apply their skills. But they need to step beyond just influencing styling and product category decisions. They need to adapt the very essence of what cars mean to us.

I drive an Alfa Romeo but I don't want a new one right now. In fact, Alfa doesn't even know where I live. What I do want is to be able to drive an Alfa in any city I visit in Europe, from the airport. I want to order a taxi and have a Jaguar arrive. I'd like to try the new Fiesta and take my mates somewhere. In fact I'd like to try loads of new cars for which I'd pay, and be able to rent them from Cornish railway stations at the end of a 5 hour rail journey. I'd probably buy an Alfa Bicycle, too.

But I don't want to take out finance on a new car that is my one and only car. I'd rather get a MacBook Air and keep driving the car I've got. But I don't want the car industry to die. Is it up to me to throw away my old car, or can car companies find new ways to make my life fun?

The '70s ended with the 1980s. Hairspray, Porsches and Dynasty. Can we have plan B this time?*

Despite the fairly parlous state of the auto industry right now, one event you can guarantee no manufacturer will pull out of is the Geneva auto show. This is Europe's big automotive deal, and it's a guaranteed draw for the car world's great and good each March.

Because of this, hotel rooms tend to book up about half a year in advance, and because I never like to plan things too far ahead (*ahem*), I won't be staying overnight at Geneva this year because I didn't organise a hotel soon enough... I will, instead, be getting up at a frankly silly hour next Tuesday morning, to drive to Gatwick and hop on an Easyjet flight which will hopefully have me in the exhibition hall before 10am.

Despite there being a lot of stuff to cover in just one day, I'd like to experiment with making my coverage interactive, rather than just trundling round photographing cars, and lunching at the expense of Nissan, Audi, Peugeot or whoever. So what would you like me to try and find out, who would you like me to try and field a question to, and which cars are you particularly interested in? Drop me an email or leave a comment here and I'll do my best to cover it or get you an answer.

What's more, I'll be tweeting throughout the event on Tuesday, so you can follow my thoughts and photos or direct a question to me there, then come back throughout Wednesday and Thursday for reports, updates, photos and video both here on Re*Move, on my flickr account and on our BlipTV and Youtube channels.

Are you keen to know more about the BMW Concept 5 Series GT's general bizarre-nesss (above), or if I've got it wrong about the Citroen DS Inside? Or just who'll spring a surprise? I wonder what the show star will be this year? Stay tuned...

Posted by Joseph Simpson on 25th February. Geneva Auto Salon's press days are 3rd and 4th March. It opens to the public from 5th-15th March.

Looking back at the past year, and seeing what you predicted for it right back at its start is always a fun game. If you want a chuckle, check here for what I was thinking about this time last year. Back to the here and now, what about 2009? It feels very brave-new-world out there, with the effects of the credit crunch, auto bailout and the imminent inauguration of Pres. Elect Obama all making themselves felt. So here’s some ideas on what might, or might not happen in the next 12 months – and some things we’ll be tracking along the way…

Autos

Much of the auto industry had a terrible 2008. And while most are predicting things will get worse in 2009, I’m watching for things to pick up. People pretty much stopped buying cars at the end of ’08, but people don’t just change the habits of a lifetime, so I believe we’ll start to see an element of 'pent-up-demand' take effect. Suddenly, after two months of nothing, there's a rash of 58 plate (new cars registered from September 08) all over south-east England. And with schemes such as Hyundai's, designed to give customers peace of mind that if they buy a car on credit and then lose their jobs, that there is a way out, I think customers will be buying again before ’09 is out…

We could see SAAB bite the dust in '09 - a shame, Anthony Lo's team look ripe to turn things around, styling wise

SAAB may not be so lucky though. Word is that GM can’t find a buyer for the brand, but despite the Swedish Government saying they’ll step in to help, SAAB’s days may be numbered. We sincerely hope this doesn't happen - SAAB is a truly great brand, with currently unrealised potential - my hunch says, that given just a little longer, Anthony Lo's design team might turn it around.

Watch for a brand that you’ve heard of before, but not for decades seen emblazoned on the front of a car as a brand in its own right – Pininfarina – make waves with their ‘B0’ electric car, developed in collaboration with French group, come battery maker, Bollore. If it looks as good as the concept in Paris, it’ll be a winner with consumers in Europe who are cost conscious and still up for eco-flavoured cars. Fingers crossed Pinifarina innovative on the selling and recharging network side of things…flogging them from the back of a Fiat dealership just won’t cut it folks.

Pininfarina B0 could be a big hit in 2009; was certainly a star of the Paris autoshow

Although Hybrid sales are currently falling off a cliff in the US, European buyers still seem keen on effective auto efficiency. America’s appetite for Hybrids appears on the wane thanks mainly to cheap oil prices – but there are predictions that won’t last forever, either. Watch for a second-wave of hybrid mania, spurred by a new Prius (in Detroit this weekend), and two possibly even cleverer new hybrids in the form of Honda’s new (bargain?) Insight and Ford's hyper-efficient Fusion hybrid.

Aviation

Three carriers now fly the Airbus A380 superjumbo in and out of Heathrow, and it hasn’t gone unnoticed. With Air France, Lufthansa and others due to get their first double-decker planes this year, the A380 will be a key selling point differentiator… Do you want to spend 20 hours in the back of a 20 year old 747, or in a brand new, uber-quiet, Marc Newson-designed interior, with on-demand entertainment, snack bar and extra legroom?

Qantas are making the A380 a big sell in the UK and Aus now, Heathrow improved in 2008 with Terminal 5

Speaking of Heathrow, watch for the proposed third runway to finally hit the buffers this year, as Labour MPs vote against their own party, due to sustainability concerns. Much is being made of a potential high speed rail-link to both northern England and continental Europe, instead. Watch to see how that develops as an alternative.

Boeing will finally get the 787 Dreamilinerairborne this year, not that it will go into commercial service until 2010. But the big question is whether they can surpass 1000 order for the plane (currently at 900).

Mobility

Watch for a rise in on-demand rental systems for vehicles, and for the rise to prominence of the mobility service provider. WhileBetter Place project stole the headline in 2008 for their proposed electric car charging networks, others will come to the fore this year, as smart phone and 3G broadband penetration grows, and the number of people able to quickly and cheaply access information on the move increases.

Zipcar hasn't made a profit yet, but such services could come into their own in 2009

The drying up of VC money with recessions has doubtless not done a lot to help this future transport sector, and the fact that Zipcar still hasn’t turned a profit might mean things don't look rosy – but one senses that companies such as this, along with Dan Sturges’s Intrago – are due their moment in the sun. Consumers fearing the big money vehicle purchases, and increasingly questioning the running costs of private cars, might find this year the ideal time to try out renting transportation on demand, particularly in developed cities... Or they might just find all sorts of random things to try out on new rental site eronto.

Support for this theory comes in the form of the first Auto-maker backed car share/mirco rental scheme, in Ulm. Mercedes has been notable by its absence from the auto-meltdown headlines, and experimenting with an idea such as car2go, which instead of leaving unsold cars in fields, puts them on the street for customers to use on a by-the-hour basis, seems like a potentially smart move. Rumours of Merc being in bed with Tesla – despite the San Carlos company’s up-and-down 2008, is probably pretty smart too.

Speaking of which, have you heard that one of the customers on the waiting list for a Tesla Roadster is purported to be one Porsche A.G? Apparently the company that has just swallowed VW was non-too impressed with the performance of a prototype electric 911 (e-RUF) developed by RUF, and has decided to take a closer look at the Tesla themselves. Obviously, this doesn’t mean Porsche are about to produce an electric car, probably far from it, but it’s an interesting development from one of the most powerful, influential and profitable car companies in the world. So we’ll be watching that space too…

Finally, city-based vehicle networks should get a further boost (in publicity, if nothing else) from Paris’s ‘autolib’ system, which will be the most advanced micro-rental system for cars yet seen. Could it do for the genre what the city’s ‘Velib’ bike sharing network did for city bike rental, now on the agenda in cities around the world – including New York?

Fuel

Some analysts now believe oil is underpriced, and in recent weeks, its fall in price seems to have leveled off. Watch for it to rise again in 2009, and for one of Obama’s first ‘unpopular’ decision to be the introduction of a higher gas tax levy – we recommend reading Darryl Siry's and Autopia's well-argued pieces to understand why this matters.

Networks + Technology

Twitter – the online micro-blooging site, which gripped us throughout 2008, will go (if it hasn’t already gone), mainstream. Witness it being tipped as one of thesites to watch for 2009 by all and sundry in the press, at present. But as more people join, the ‘fail whale’ already seems to be returning, and the big question could be whether twitter ends up going the way of facebook – dominated by irritating people you thought you’d left behind at high school..! Our hope, and suspicion, is not. Incidentally, if you’d like to follow us, we're @JoeSimpson and @Charmermark, or click through the widgets to the right.

Tweetdeck has helped make Twitter a powerful, manageable tool for me

Geo-tagging is one of the things we’ll be exploring in much greater depth in 2009. While many have been utilising the feature for some time (it is the addition of geographical location data to media such as photos), we haven't really utilised its potential and usefulness yet, so we’ll be getting to grips with it, and make the most of it throughout 2009.

Cities and locality

As the recession bites in the UK, cherished high-street names such as Woolworths, have disappeared. So does this mean an increasingly homogenised world, with high-streets full of Tesco locals, and little else?

The start of 2009 saw the end of British high street favourite, Woolworths

We hope not, and have long talked about the different undercurrents and trends in each city, which we believe are critically important and of increasing influence in the field of design. With the help of our extended network, and as we move around the world in 2009, we’ll be doing more deep-dive, trend-based research in certain cities. Ultimately, we think there’s value in monitoring and trying to understand how small, subtle changes are affecting large cities around the world, and what trends are emerging where.

And above all…

Without wishing to sound twee, above all we want to critically engage you, our readers, with what we’re doing throughout 2009. Rather than mere broadcasting (which is admittedly what this feels like...) We’ll be focusing heavily on areas like video, and social media tools, to try and have a multi-way conversation – between those we meet who are shaping the future of how we move around, ourselves, and hopefully you, as the reader. We want to know what you think, and what you want to know. So we hope you’ll jump in whenever you like. Suggestions, criticisms, thoughts and ideas all welcome. Comment on the blogs, DM tweet me here, or mail me here.

Disclosure: Ford is sponsoring our Design Research Work throughout 2009. Joseph Simpson leads research on automotive and city-related topics at The Movement Design Bureau. He is also an associate at Car Design Research, a contributor to CarDesignNews.com and a visiting lecture in Vehicle Design at London's Royal College of Art.

The ad harks back 25 years to 1984, when hair was big, braces were in, and mobile phones needed their own suitcase. While Virgin has in recent years been trying to promote itself as a more upmarket, cool, sophisticated airline, this advert gets right back to heart of the brand's values - fun, cheeky and a little bit sexy. Weather that's true of the actual flying experience is another matter, but it's nice to see someone trying to put the fun back into flying in a quintessentially British way!

Worth it just for the Frankie Goes To Hollywood soundtrack (!), you can see the ad by clicking below.